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Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

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Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#31

Post by kodt »

derekp7 wrote: post #21
aaron-lebo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did say SV, which is probably true. Europe may or may not have the culture you are suggesting, China might have that hunger but no business started there is safe from gov control, Russia has that control without the economic growth, a lot of places are too small. But...there's probably a dozen cities in the US where you could get everything you can in SV (ok, maybe not the monoculture, the crazy VCs, the crazy cos…

I wonder why Chicago isn't more of a major destination for tech companies. The city is highly walkable, has excellent transportation infrastructure, and low cost nice housing is plentiful within an hour commute by train or car. You can get a nice house for less than 200k, apartment rent is around 600 - 1000 a month. In the city, there are a lot of old 3-4 story houses that have been converted to each floor being a re…

>You can get a nice house for less than 200k

Gonna need a source on that one

Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#32

Post by icu »

melling wrote: post #16
icu wrote: post #8

With the greatest respect for Mr. Thiel and his accomplishments I'm skeptical. I've travelled the world and my experience is that very few places in the world have America's, often irrational, can-do attitude, appetite for new venture risk, and societal acceptance of new venture failure as an important part of the entrepreneurial process. I just don't think it's that easy to graft these cultural norms to other cultur…

He referenced China. Any big startups come out of there?

China is a funny one. For sure there is 'hustle'... I was scammed many a time in Beijing... But there is this really important cultral dimension in China called "guanxi".

It's not easy to summarise the importance and pervasiveness of guanxi... from a Western perspective it could be described as corruption but it's more like a social currency that is involved in any important transaction.

Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#33

Post by refurb »

dmode wrote: post #17
twblalock wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did Silicon Valley ever become what it is, and why did it continue to be dominant in the tech industry for so long, when there were billions of people outside of Silicon Valley the entire time? Clearly population numbers are not sufficient in themselves to explain why the situation will change.

Thanks for the down votes. But if you haven't realized, the world has changed dramatically since valley became Valley. There is a lot more wealth distribution around the world and technology is easily accessible. Look at the 50s and look at now and see how Asia has emerged as a dominant economic force. China is #2 in total GDP, and India is #7. Couple this with the fact that these two countries have unlimited workfor…

No actually, it's not that obvious.

Look back to the 1980's. I remember watching news clips on TV of people smashing up Japanese electronics because they were taking over the US. It was plainly obvious they were going to displace the US as the leading economic power. Hell! They were buying up all the largest buildings in the US!!

Didn't quite turn out that way, huh?

Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#34

Post by ng12 »

derekp7 wrote: post #21
aaron-lebo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did say SV, which is probably true. Europe may or may not have the culture you are suggesting, China might have that hunger but no business started there is safe from gov control, Russia has that control without the economic growth, a lot of places are too small. But...there's probably a dozen cities in the US where you could get everything you can in SV (ok, maybe not the monoculture, the crazy VCs, the crazy cos…

I wonder why Chicago isn't more of a major destination for tech companies. The city is highly walkable, has excellent transportation infrastructure, and low cost nice housing is plentiful within an hour commute by train or car. You can get a nice house for less than 200k, apartment rent is around 600 - 1000 a month. In the city, there are a lot of old 3-4 story houses that have been converted to each floor being a re…

Because it doesn't have the people and that's all that really matters. SV is self-fulfilling at this point: talented programmers and entrepreneurs flock to the Bay because that's where the talented programmers and entrepreneurs are.

Yes, there are talented programmers in every metropolitan area but the Bay has significantly more of them than anywhere else.

Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#35

Post by adventured »

tryingagainbro wrote: post #6

My bet is that still it will be in USA. Among many other things, there's no shame in "failing" in USA. Investors and banks take a chance, fully knowing that most will fail. In a lot of countries failure will follow you for the rest of your life. Not to mention that you'll be broke owing to banks, friends and tax authorities.

There are only half a dozen or so nations on the planet that can compete with the US at all when it comes to technology start-ups. Nobody else has enough of the required ingredients. For example Sweden has something very interesting going on - yet they are very unlikely to ever produce a Facebook or Google, the fractured European market and cultural system and their tiny local population base is a very big friction point (unless they go after the US market early on, as with Spotify, becoming a proxy US start-up).

The rapid lead that the large, unified market of the US + Canada provides, is extraordinary. Only China offers something competitive to that and as an outsider you can't move to China and form successful large start-ups (which is why among their major tech companies, there are no cultural foreigners or non-Chinese running businesses like Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Didi, Alipay, etc and there never will be). The US + Canada = near $21 trillion in economy, with extremely high disposable income levels, that mostly all uses/understands English.

Fundamentally this is why Europe has struggled so immensely to produce new tech giants in the last 20 years, compared to the US or China. It's not the lack of risk-seeking capital; although that's less than in the US, there is still enough. There is some cultural restraint depending on the country. Mostly though, it's because of how extremely difficult it is to adopt to all the various nation by nation differences early into the life of a product and acquire market dominance in enough of them to then have a strong foundation from which to springboard globally.

Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#36

Post by NicoJuicy »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #13
icu wrote: post #8

With the greatest respect for Mr. Thiel and his accomplishments I'm skeptical. I've travelled the world and my experience is that very few places in the world have America's, often irrational, can-do attitude, appetite for new venture risk, and societal acceptance of new venture failure as an important part of the entrepreneurial process. I just don't think it's that easy to graft these cultural norms to other cultur…

He did say SV, which is probably true. Europe may or may not have the culture you are suggesting, China might have that hunger but no business started there is safe from gov control, Russia has that control without the economic growth, a lot of places are too small. But...there's probably a dozen cities in the US where you could get everything you can in SV (ok, maybe not the monoculture, the crazy VCs, the crazy cos…

Europe has the culture, just not the funding.

Investments are way too little

Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#37

Post by tomaha »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #25
tomaha wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that there are nice options in the US and you'll have a much more comfortable life. But if you want to learn as much as you can, if you want to have as many options as you could possible have, and quiet frankly earn as much as you could, you'll likely should move to SV and no other place in the US will even come close to that. The bleeding edge of technology is and will be in SV and China (and China is not re…

You can learn an unbelievable amount sitting in your room in your underwear and work with and on world class projects. There are more free resources than ever before, location is not a constraint.

The resources you can have are so limited in comparison what you can do if you are on the right project with the right people at for example Google. You will not find a free or open project that will be able to compete with the data, resources, and knowledge you will find there. Besides that it's much faster to learn from someone who knows than finding the right material online. And in the end most world-class projects will have someone that works or worked in SV in them because that's where they got a lot of their experience.

Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#38

Post by oh-kumudo »

melling wrote: post #16
icu wrote: post #8

With the greatest respect for Mr. Thiel and his accomplishments I'm skeptical. I've travelled the world and my experience is that very few places in the world have America's, often irrational, can-do attitude, appetite for new venture risk, and societal acceptance of new venture failure as an important part of the entrepreneurial process. I just don't think it's that easy to graft these cultural norms to other cultur…

He referenced China. Any big startups come out of there?

Didi/Mobike/Meituan/Xiaomi...the list could get really long

Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#39

Post by adventured »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #23
adventured wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but 90% of it is garbage. That's inherent to the process of all creation and business starting. 90% of everything is garbage. That's a case where there's nothing unique about Silicon Valley. I'm sure you're at least vaguely aware of the very high failure rate of all new businesses within just a five year span. Or see: last 200 years of industrial history. There were hundreds of automakers just in Detroit in the US,…

It was an observation, not a normative statement. The only part anyone really cares about is the 10%, so if your goal isn't to have an ecosystem that is always churning through stuff, that aspect isn't a huge advantage.

There's no such thing as an ecosystem that isn't always churning through stuff (other than a dead one). The premise you're floating doesn't exist.

Silicon Valley's 10% is better than the 10% anyone else produces. It also does it at a higher volume simultaneously. That's why it's Silicon Valley and nobody has managed to match it in the last 50 years.

Re: Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

#40

Post by _RPM »

tomaha wrote: post #29
derekp7 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why Chicago isn't more of a major destination for tech companies. The city is highly walkable, has excellent transportation infrastructure, and low cost nice housing is plentiful within an hour commute by train or car. You can get a nice house for less than 200k, apartment rent is around 600 - 1000 a month. In the city, there are a lot of old 3-4 story houses that have been converted to each floor being a re…

Because mostly only big companies choose their destination. For the rest it's where they live when they found the company. So if more people in Chicago found tech companies you'll get more tech companies. That's the reason SV is a self-feeding machine. People work at one of the many startups or big companies here, get experience, get money, and then part of them start their own companies. That's the circle that drive…

> So if more people in Chicago found tech companies you'll get more tech companies

Wait, really?

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